Open Source Licensing: What Businesses Need to Know

Open source software powers much of the modern internet, but using it in your product comes with license obligations that many businesses overlook at their peril.

Open source is free to use but not free of rules. Each license carries conditions, and violating them can create serious legal exposure.

The main license types

• Permissive licenses like MIT and Apache, minimal obligations
• Copyleft licenses like GPL, require sharing derivative code
• Weak copyleft like LGPL, applies to the library itself
• Dual licensing for commercial flexibility

What businesses must do

• Track every open source component you use
• Understand each license’s obligations
• Comply with attribution and source-sharing rules
• Audit before any acquisition or product release

Build an open source compliance process early, and you get all the benefits of shared code without inheriting its legal risks.

Staying compliant

Compliance is not one-time, it requires ongoing tracking as you add new open source components with each release.

• Track components in a bill of materials
• Review licenses per release
• Audit before acquisitions